On June 11, 2007, Environment Texas and 41 other environmental, sportsmen, agriculature and business organizations wrote Congress in support of H.R. 2593, the Borderlands Conservation and Security Act of 2007.  The legislation would amend existing border security law to help alleviate the devastating impacts of border enforcement activities and undocumented immigration on public lands, wildlife, and borderland communities, while providing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with the flexibility it needs to effectively secure our borders.

For more on this issue, please read the following article from the Sierra Club's Scott Nicol: 

Two weeks before the 2006 midterm elections, President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act into law.  It stated that within 18 months, “the Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide for at least 2 layers of reinforced fencing, the installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors,” along more than 700 miles of the United States’ southern border.  In Texas the bill mandated barriers adjacent to El Paso; from Del Rio to Eagle Pass; and from Laredo to Brownsville.  If the border wall is completed it will do enormous damage to the Rio Grande’s already overstressed ecosystem.

A number of misconceptions surround the Secure Fence Act, the first of which is the use of the term “fence”.  Likely chosen to evoke images of the picket fence that separates suburban neighbors, the barriers that have been built to date along the southern border more closely resemble the Berlin Wall.  In California and Arizona rusted steel plates that were formerly used as landing strips in the Vietnam war have been driven into the earth to create walls that are 15 feet tall.  South of San Diego this was further reinforced, the final result being 3 layers of concrete, steel, and barbed wire, with a graded road and 50 feet on either side cleared of all vegetation.  This tore through the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, and involved filling in a gulch with over 2 million cubic yards of dirt taken from adjacent hills so that the road paralleling the walls would remain level and Border Patrol vehicles could travel at 50 miles an hour along it. 

Another misconception is the belief that established environmental laws will mitigate the damage caused by such a massive construction project.  In 2005 the Real ID Act, attached as a rider to a supplemental appropriations bill funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, decreed, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall have the authority to waive all legal requirements such Secretary, in such Secretary’s sole discretion, determines necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads under this section.”  On September 22, 2005, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff used his new power to “waive in their entirety” the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act to extend triple fencing through the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve.  The Real ID Act further stipulates that his decisions are not subject to judicial review, and in December 2005 a federal judge dismissed legal challenges by the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and others to Chertoff’s decision.  On January 19, 2007 Secretary Chertoff waived these laws and more to facilitate the construction of walls along the Arizona border.  To build walls along the Rio Grande he will almost certainly do the same.

The wall that will be built from Laredo to Brownsville will cover more than 200 miles, and will slice through the heart of a wildlife corridor and a flyway vital to migratory birds.  Ocelots, numbering less than 100 and listed under the Endangered Species Act, live in the area’s remaining habitat.  Jaguarundi, which are even rarer than the ocelot in the United States, are also found there.  Because so few of each species are left in the U.S. they must have access to mates in Mexico to avoid inbreeding.  The lights trained on the wall have the potential to disrupt the ability of these mostly nocturnal animals to hunt nearby, and may also interfere with the night time migrations of numerous bird species.  Migrating birds, bats, and butterflies require places in which to rest and refuel during their journeys.  Clearing miles and miles of riparian habitat to build walls and roads will result in increasing stress on migrants who may end up without the energy necessary to survive the flight.  These impacts will be in addition to the more visible damage that will be done to the ecosystems of the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park & World Birding Center, Roma Bluffs World Birding Center, NABA International Butterfly Park, Sabal Palm Audubon Sanctuary, and numerous US Fish & Wildlife tracts that front the Rio Grande, all of which are in the direct path of the wall. 

The biggest misconception is that construction of the border wall will result in the Department of Homeland Security being able to, “achieve and maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States,” in the words of the Secure Fence Act.  The walls built in California and Arizona have cut down the amount of illegal crossings in their immediate vicinity, but the number or people residing illegally in the United States has not been reduced.  Some of the illegal border activity simply shifted to other areas.  Completely unaffected are the fully half of those living in the country illegally who first entered the US lawfully and later overstayed a visa.  DHS spokesman Russ Knocke recently said that “fencing slows someone down even by a few seconds before they can find their way to a house, a business, a car, some transportation system and get away.”  The border wall will contribute to the extinction in the United States of the ocelot and jaguarundi, will do irreparable damage to parks and refuges, and is estimated to cost $3.5 million per mile.  That is hardly an acceptable price for a wall that will only slow someone down by “a few seconds.”